Hong Ge et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Dec 30, 2019

14031453 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Dec. 30, 2019)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/031,453 09/19/2013 Hong Ge 26295-24221 2015
87851 7590 12/30/2019
Facebook/Fenwick
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
EXAMINER
WEBER, JOY M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2173
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/30/2019 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
fwfacebookpatents@fenwick.com
ptoc@fenwick.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte HONG GE and LARS SEREN BACKSTROM
Appeal 2019-000005
Application 14/031,453
Technology Center 2100
Before JAMES R. HUGHES, JENNIFER L. McKEOWN,
and JASON M. REPKO, Administrative Patent Judges.
HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–20, which are all the claims pending
in this application. See Final Act. 1–2.2 We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

1 We use the word Appellant to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.42(a). Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Facebook, Inc.
See Appeal Br. 2.
2 We refer to Appellant’s Specification (“Spec.”), filed Sept. 19, 2013;
Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.”), filed Apr. 23, 2018; and Reply Brief (“Reply
Br.”), filed Sept. 28, 2018. We also refer to the Examiner’s Final Office
Action (“Final Act.”), mailed Aug. 25, 2017; and Answer (“Ans.”) mailed
Aug. 10, 2018.
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We REVERSE.
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The invention relates “generally to social networking systems, and in
particular to providing content of a social networking system across multiple
user devices.” Spec. ¶ 1; see Spec. ¶¶ 5–7; Abstract. Claims 1, 10, and 18
are independent. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed
subject matter:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
maintaining, by a social networking system, a view state
for a user of the social networking system, the view state being a
record of content items that identifies:
a plurality of content items as having been sent to a
user device, one or more of the plurality of content items
as having been presented to the user, and
an order in which the one or more of the plurality of
content items were presented to the user;
receiving, by the social networking system, a request for
content items associated with the user;
identifying, by the social networking system based on the
view state, at least one content item as having not been presented
to the user, the at least one content item of the plurality of content
items identified by the view state as having been sent to the user
device;
identifying, by the social networking system based on the
view state, additional content items as having changed state
since presentation of the one or more of the plurality of content
items to the user, the additional content items being from the one
or more of the plurality of content items identified by the view
state as having been presented to the user, and wherein
identifying the additional content items as having changed state
includes:
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receiving specified new interaction from at least
one other user with respect to the additional content items;
identifying, by the social networking system, a content
item, from the at least one content item identified as having not
been presented to the user, as having at least a threshold
relevance to the user;
ranking, by the social networking system based on
relevance to the user, the additional content items and the
content item identified as having not been presented to the user
and as having at least the threshold relevance to the user;
selecting, by the social networking system, one or more
content items based at least in part on the ranking, the selected
one or more content items forming a set of content items; and
sending, from the social networking system, a newsfeed to
the user device for presentation to the user, the newsfeed
comprising the selected set of content items displayed above a
subset of the one or more of the plurality of content items.
Appeal Br. 24–25 (Claims App.).
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Schacht et al. (“’249
Patent”)
US 9,117,249 B2 Aug. 25, 2015 (filed
Mar 15, 2012)
Gross US 8,775,405 B2 July 8, 2014 (filed
June 20, 2013)
Schacht et al. (“’531
App.”)3
US 2015/0319201 A1 Nov. 5, 2015 (filed
July 6, 2015)
Spivack et al. (“Spivack”) US 2013/0298038 A1 Nov. 7, 2013 (filed
Jan. 28, 2013)
van Hoff US 2013/0097186 A1 Apr. 18, 2013
Darnell et al. (“Darnell”) US 2012/0042012 A1 Feb. 16, 2012

3 US Application No. 14/792,531 filed on July 6, 2015 claims benefit of US
13/421,786, filed on Mar. 15, 2012. The ’531 App. published Nov. 5, 2015
(US 2015/0319201 A1) and is now abandoned.
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REJECTIONS4, 5, 6
1. The Examiner provisionally rejects claims 1–20 under on the
ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting over claims 1–3,
5–15, and 17–24 of the ’531 App. and Gross. See Final Act. 2–3.
2. The Examiner rejects claims 1–20 under on the ground of
nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting over claims 1–22 of the
’249 Patent and Gross. See Final Act. 3.
3. The Examiner rejects claims 1–5, 7–14, and 16–20 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack.
See Final Act. 5–11.
4. The Examiner rejects claims 6 and 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over van Hoff, Darnell, Spivack, and Gross. See Final
Act. 11–12.

4 The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”), Pub. L. No. 112–29, 125
Stat. 284 (2011), amended 35 U.S.C. § 103, e.g., to rename 35 U.S.C.
§ 103’s subsections. Because the present application has an effective filing
date (Sept. 19, 2013) after the AIA’s effective date for applications (March
16, 2013), this decision refers 35 U.S.C. § 103.
5 Appellant does not address either of the Examiner’s nonstatutory
obviousness-type double patenting (“OTDP”) rejections (Rejections 1 and
2). Appellant, instead, requested that the Examiner hold these rejections in
abeyance. See “Amendment C” dated May 19, 2017. Accordingly, we
summarily affirm the uncontested OTDP rejections.
6 The Examiner withdrew the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101. See Ans. 3;
Final Act. 3. Accordingly, we do not address Appellant’s arguments
directed to the withdrawn rejection. See Appeal Br. 6–18.
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OPINION
Obviousness Rejection of Claims 1–5, 7–14, and 16–20
The Examiner rejects independent claim 1 (as well as independent
claims 10 and 18, and dependent claims 2–5, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 17, 19, and 20)
over van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack. See Final Act. 5–9; Ans. 3–7.
Appellant contends van Hoff, Darnell, and Spivack do not teach the disputed
limitations of claim 1. See Appeal Br. 18–22; Reply Br. 2–5. Specifically,
Appellant contends, inter alia, that although van Hoff discloses status
updates (as shown by the Examiner—see Final Act. 6–7; Ans. 4–5 (citing
van Hoff ¶¶ 16–17, 26–28, 36)), van Hoff “does not teach or suggest . . . [the
status updates] ‘having changed state since presentation of the . . . content
items to the user’” and as “such, Hoff does not teach or suggest ‘identifying,
by the social networking system based on the view state, additional content
items as having changed state since presentation of the one or more of the
plurality of content items to the user’” as recited in claim 1. Appeal Br. 20
(quoting claim 1); see Appeal Br. 19–20; Reply Br. 2–3. Appellant
additionally contends that although Hoff’s crawler identifies “status
updates” or “latest updates,” the identification “is not performed based on a
view state for a content item.” Reply Br. 2. Further, Appellant contends
theses updates constitute “[n]ew items” of content that were not previously
presented to the user as required by the claim—“[n]ew items available in a
source are not content items having changed state since presentation to a
user.” Reply Br. 2. Appellant also contends that even if the updates are
“identified as content items having changed state since presentation to a
user,” “a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have understood this
portion of Hoff,” i.e., the updates (content items), “as disclosing the
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identification of the ‘additional content items’ without a substantial amount
of hindsight,” i.e., the updates are not additional content. Reply Br 2–3.
Appellant further contends that “neither Hoff, Darnell, nor Spivack teach or
suggest ‘receiving specified new interaction from at least one other user with
respect to the additional content items’” as recited in claim 1 (Appeal Br. 21
(quoting claim 1)) and Spivack “instead only teaches that interactions with
content items may be used as a factor in analyzing trends, topics, and
behaviors of users” (Appeal Br. 21), which is not a new interaction. See
Appeal Br. 21; Reply Br. 3–4.
We agree with Appellant that the Examiner-cited portions of van Hoff
and Spivack (in combination with Darnell) do not describe “identifying . . .
based on the view state, additional content items as having changed state
since presentation of the one or more of the plurality of content items to the
user” and such identifying (of the additional content items as having
changed state) further including “receiving specified new interaction from at
least one other user with respect to the additional content items” as recited in
claim 1 (Appeal Br. 24–25 (Claims App.)). See Appeal Br. 18–22; Reply
Br. 2–5. The Examiner-cited portions of van Hoff describe status updates,
but do not explicitly describe the content previously being presented to a
user and a portion (subset) of the previously presented content being
identified as having changed state (being updated) since the presentation.
Nor does van Hoff in combination with Spivack describe a new interaction
related to the additional content. At best the Examiner-cited portions of van
Hoff describe identifying content that has been updated by other social
media users (status updates), which is not additional content extracted from
content previously presented to a user. The Examiner does not sufficiently
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explain how the cited portions of van Hoff at least suggest the disputed
features.
Consequently, we are constrained by the record before us to find that
the Examiner erred in finding that the combination of van Hoff, Darnell, and
Spivack obvious Appellant’s claim 1. Independent claims 10 and 18 include
limitations of commensurate scope. Claims 2–5, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 17, 19, and
20 depend on and stand with claims 1, 10, and 18, respectively.
Obviousness Rejections of Claims 6 and 15
The Examiner rejects claims 6 and 15, which depend from claims 1
and 10 (respectively), as obvious in view of van Hoff, Darnell, Spivack, and
Gross. See Final Act. 11–12. The Examiner does not suggest, and we do
not find, that the additional cited reference (Gross) cures the deficiencies of
van Hoff and Spivack (in combination with Darnell) (supra). Therefore, we
do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of dependent claims 6
and 15 for the same reasons set forth for their respective base claims (supra).
CONCLUSION
For the reasons discussed above, we determine that claims 1–20 are
unpatentable on the grounds of nonstatutory obviousness-type double
patenting.
For the reasons discussed above, we also determine that claims 1–20
are not obvious in view of the cited prior art. Appellant has shown that the
Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
We therefore affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–20 because
we sustained at least one ground of the Examiner’s rejection.
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DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–20 nonstatutory
obviousness-type
double patenting
’531 App., Gross 1–20
1–20 nonstatutory
obviousness-type
double patenting
’249 Patent, Gross 1–20
1–20 103 Hoff, Darnell, Spivack 1-20
6, 15 103 Hoff, Darnell,
Spivack, Gross
6, 15
Overall
Outcome

1–20

REVERSED